


This is the beat of my heart

by millenniumfalcon



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, a celebration of charles vane, a kind of eulogy, i needed to tell myself that it had not been all for nothing so here we are, our truest hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 14:32:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6858880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millenniumfalcon/pseuds/millenniumfalcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim is a kid that never imagined anything different than the life he had always known, until Charles Vane's last words inspire him to greater and more powerful thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the beat of my heart

**Author's Note:**

> **Written for the Charles Vane Memorial Week on Tumblr**
> 
> This is just my way of coping with pain.  
> Charles Vane has meant a fucking lot to me and I wanted to celebrate how truly inspiring and fascinating he is.
> 
> Many many thanks to Jo (starscollision) for being a sweet supportive beta <3 
> 
> The title is from "This is gospel" by Panic! At The Disco, because why not.

It's a sunny and hot day in Nassau - isn't it always?

The light is purely white, streaming down on people going about their business as usual. Or, for the most part as usual, to be precise.

In front of the Governor's house, the gibbet swings sadly as an ominous reminder of Mankind's eternal and infallible mortality. Inside it, the deteriorating rests of what used to be, until a handful of hours before, a body full of life and strength: the body of Charles Vane, one of the most feared and respected pirates as far as anyone could remember.

The Governor's house is silent and seemingly watchful - as if inside it numerous prying eyes were hidden in the shadows, studying those people that never learned how to belong to anyone or anything, whether it be a country or a king or an ideal. Rumour has it that the Governor Rogers is dying inside that house, drawing laboured breath after laboured breath on a sick bed that he is not likely to soon leave on his own legs. Of course, there is no official communication of any of that: everyone, inside that house, wants to keep the whole matter hushed, for the sake of order and law and civilization and whatever it is they are raising as their flag at the moment. But, as anyone with a decent knowledge of this place would easily remember, gossip travels fast on swift wings and there is no stopping it.

In front of the gibbet, there stands a young boy. He looks roughly eleven years old, but he himself wouldn't be able to tell his exact age - there isn't much attention lost on birthdays and such, in the place he comes from.

His name is another source of uncertainty. His mother only ever called him _Jim_ , which, as far as he knows, is short for nothing: it's just Jim.

He doesn't have a family name because he doesn't have a family and, more specifically, he doesn't have a father to inherit any name from.

His life has only ever just been flattened on a present that was given to him, without anyone ever even thinking that he could want or be able to change it. Things is, there are not many possibilities, when you are the bastard son of a whore in a place like Nassau: sand, the sea, more sand, sketchy trade, fights between captains, bloodshed and instability, more sand. Slightly too young and not strong enough to join a crew yet, far too old to be taken care of by anyone.

His mother is a good-natured sort of woman, but she has always been too caught up in her own trade to mind much what her son was doing. That is how Jim grew up a child of the island, running errands for whomever would pay a few small coins for his time and his good memory and his fast legs. He's a scrawny little thing, skin burnt by the sun and eyes dry from the sea wind. He is one amongst many: little dirty faces peering out of every corner of Nassau, fast hands that soon learn the art of thieving and thriving where you'd least expect them to. He is one amongst many, children and adults alike, riding whichever current will deliver them to the next day, and then the one after aìthat, and the one after that and so on.

He is one amongst many, and yet he is the only one standing by the gibbet in the streaming sunlight.

Everyone is forcing themselves to go on about their business as usual, but it is a poor attempt and Jim can see right through it. After all, he can't be the only one feeling like he does, can he?

The thing is, he had never much cared for anything except what touched him directly, which meant essentially survival. Nassau is like a true jungle in that: only if you manage to be strong enough and ruthless enough do you survive. As he has always been used to, he has always worried about that and that alone. But today is different, much different.

The coming of Governor Rogers, truth be told, had not upset much the life on the island - sure, a lot of things had changed, but those changes did not affect directly the common people living in Nassau. So they had all thought they would just adapt where and when it was necessary and continue their lives much like before. But today that seems more unlinkely than ever.

Because today still echoes yesterday's words - the air still vibrates with them, the earth shakes and shifts. Yesterday, then hanged Charles Vane, but that is not the point. A lot of people get hanged, a lot of pirates get hanged everyday in the colonies and everyone knows it. It's not that big of a surprise: you thieve and thrive and then finally they catch you and it's over, you're over. It wouldn't have been any different with Vane, if it hadn't been for those words. The words he spoke with his very last breath, head held high and eyes unwaveringly fixed on the silent crowd. Those words spoke of freedom, those words spoke of life, those words spoke of courage and bravery and resistance. All foreign concepts to the simple minds of Nassau, in deep in shady trade and profits. Nevertheless, the power of those words was not lost on anyone who witnessed the hanging. Surely someone must have been baffled by them, surely someone's instinctive reaction was to dismiss them as quick as possible, because what could they do and why should they do it? Nassau is not their home: Nassau is just the place they have been living their whole lives, but it has never really felt like home. Home is a fairytale for chidlren, and everyone who wants to survive knows better than to dwell on it. Nassau has never left much place for dreamers, or idealists, or anything else than merchants and thieves.

Jim, as anyone else here, had always been absolutely certain that things like the people's perspective on life would never ever change. He had always thought that nothing and no one would ever have the necessary strength to do so. And yet, today, he has to admit that he has been proven wrong, that they have all been proven wrong.

The most powerful aspect of the matter, he thinks, is that Charles Vane was just a man. There were stories circulating about him in the inn and in the brothel and in the streets, stories that both astruck fear into the heart of anyone who heard them and made them develop a mad sense of respect for Captain Vane and the men who followed him. So that was how Charles Vane became half a man and half a myth. 

But a legend can carry only as far as the person is seen as invincible - and Charles Vane was taken. For everyone to see and for everyone to scorn, he was paraded towards the gallows, bound and defeated. He was a man then, a man like any other, a man subdued by his fate. A man whose death seemed, at first glance, a just consequence and punishment for his actions, his crimes, his dissolute ways. Up until the moment he opened his mouth, Charles Vane to the crown was a man they could blame and a man they could hate, a man that was not any bigger or stronger and mightier than any of them.

That could have been the end of it - except Charles Vane, in truth, was not a man like any other on that island. His heart was not barren, his mind was not narrow and his actions were not petty and inconsequential. Which is why his words had changed everything.

Jim never thought much about words. He was not as illiterate as most, truth be told: when Rackham had become the owner of the brothel, he had brought with him quite a lot of books and Jim, for whatever reason, had been intrigued. He had started to sneakily subtract one or two volumes and, with what little he had picked up here and there, taught himself how to read decently. The books he had taken, he then put back in their place and sneaked out another one or two, and so on. At first, he had thought that Rackham hadn't noticed anything (which made him feel quite proud of himself), but he was suddenly contradicted when, one day, as he was going to replace a volume, he found a book called _True Stories of Gained and Lost Captaincy_ lying in plain sight on the desk, accompanied by a slip of paper that read "This is a very interesting reading. J.R.". Be that as it may, the man did not seem to mind - and Jim ended up really enjoying that book.

Even so, though, Jim never even considered that words could have any great power over the minds and hearts of men. Sure, a man could be conviced and swayed, but Jim had always thought that there was only so much you could achieve by just talking.

All of this was before, though. Now, as he stands under the unforgiving sun and stares up at the body swaying in the gibbet, Jim knows better.

That man had stood upon the gallows and fiercely looked into the eyes of people who had come just to see him die. He looked at them and he did not blame them. He looked at them and he gave them hope. He, a dying man, gave the living a chance at hope that they didn't even know they needed. On Vane's part, it was more than sacrifice: it was a leap of faith - faith in each and every one of them, faith in Nassau - even when Nassau was shunning him, even when Nassau was standing by and watching idly while he was being killed. Charles Vane never lost his faith, never lost his hope, never lost his courage: that is the truth.

And Jim knows that this morning, everyone in Nassau has woken up with his words still etched into their minds, urging them to do something, to become something - to take back what is theirs, to affirm their freedom over some stranger country's gain, to resist against prevarication.

No one had ever done for the people of Nassau what Charles Vane did: instead of telling them what they were and forcing labels and beliefs upon them, he urged them to stand up and chose for themselves.

And in the end, isn't that what freedom is all about?

Jim is fairly certain that it is.

Charles Vane was just a man, but he was a free man, and that is what ultimately made him undefeated. They may have hanged him and left his body to rot in plain sight, but they never beat him: for you cannot kill the heart and courage of someone who will not let you.

Jim moves a few steps closer to the gibbet, his clear eyes unflinchingly fixed on the body inside; he is not repulsed and he is not saddened by that sight, not really - his mind and his heart are too full of gratitude to leave space to anything else. He feels extremely thankful for Charles Vane's words - they shook his whole world up, they made him question his whole life and that of those near him, they made him unsure of his present and hungry for a different future - and he has never felt more alive. Now he knows that life is more than just a pointless effort to live one day more. He has discovered in himself the ability to believe in something and the will to fight for it. He has discovered that he, too, can be a free man. And he owes it all to Charles Vane.

As he stands in front of the gibbet, he knows that there is not much left of Charles Vane there - instead, Jim is quite sure that he lives on in every person that heard his last words and decided to choose freedom and defend it against any kind of slavery.

Jim can feel a part of Charles Vane in himself, too - it's right there, in the way his heart beats faster and steadier today.

"They can't hang us all", he whispers as he closes his eyes against the sun and remembers the look in Charles Vane's eyes as the noose was placed around his neck.

Jim shall never forget it: those were the eyes of a free man, those were the eyes of a brave man, those were the eyes of a man full of life.

Those were the eyes of an undefeated hero.

Those were the eyes of an unyielding captain.

Those were the eyes of a brother. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo I hope you liked this! If you like, let me know what you think in the comments :)  
> And if you want, you can find me on calicocaptain.tumblr.com


End file.
